This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

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Friday, October 30, 2015

Why I Am No Longer a Measurement Specialist by Dr. Gene Glass

Important read for the adherents of standardized, test-based measurement from FORMER nationally-renowned specialist, Arizona State University Professor Dr. Gene Glass. Concise quote on why he's defecting from the field of measurement:

The degrading of public education has involved impugning its
effectiveness, cutting its budget, and busting its unions. Educational
measurement has been the perfect tool for accomplishing all three: cheap
and scientific looking.

The only thing that I might add is that it is important for progressives to study psychometrics so that they can critique/challenge from within. But I totally get it that once one is in this community, it can be very seductive to the point that one can abandon one's original commitments to equity. Not in Gene's case though. He's simply defecting. Check out Gene Glass' blog here. -Angela

Monday, August 17, 2015

I was introduced to psychometrics in 1959. I thought it was really neat.
By 1960, I was programming a computer on a psychometrics research
project funded by the Office of Naval Research. In 1962, I entered
graduate school to study educational measurement under the top scholars
in the field.
My mentors – both those I spoke with daily and those whose works I read –
had served in WWII. Many did research on human factors — measuring
aptitudes and talents and matching them to jobs. Assessments showed who
were the best candidates to be pilots or navigators or marksmen. We were
told that psychometrics had won the war; and of course, we believed it.
The next wars that psychometrics promised it could win were the wars on
poverty and ignorance. The man who led the Army Air Corps effort in
psychometrics started a private research center. (It exists today, and
is a beneficiary of the millions of dollars spent on Common Core
testing.) My dissertation won the 1966 prize in Psychometrics awarded by
that man’s organization. And I was hired to fill the slot recently
vacated by the world’s leading psychometrician at the University of
Illinois. Psychometrics was flying high, and so was I.
Psychologists of the 1960s & 1970s were saying that just measuring
talent wasn’t enough. Talents had to be matched with the demands of
tasks to optimize performance. Measure a learning style, say, and match
it to the way a child is taught. If Jimmy is a visual learner, then
teach Jimmy in a visual way. Psychometrics promised to help build a
better world. But twenty years later, the promises were still
unfulfilled. Both talent and tasks were too complex to yield to this
simple plan. Instead, psychometricians grew enthralled with mathematical
niceties. Testing in schools became a ritual without any real purpose
other than picking a few children for special attention.
Around 1980, I served for a time on the committee that made most of the
important decisions about the National Assessment of Educational
Progress. The project was under increasing pressure to “grade” the NAEP
results: Pass/Fail; A/B/C/D/F; Advanced/Proficient/Basic. Our committee held firm: such grading was purely arbitrary, and worse, would only be used politically.
The contract was eventually taken from our organization and given to
another that promised it could give the nation a grade, free of
politics. It couldn’t.
Measurement has changed along with the nation. In the last three
decades, the public has largely withdrawn its commitment to public
education. The reasons are multiple: those who pay for public schools
have less money, and those served by the public schools look less and
less like those paying taxes.
The degrading of public education has involved impugning its
effectiveness, cutting its budget, and busting its unions. Educational
measurement has been the perfect tool for accomplishing all three: cheap
and scientific looking.
International tests have purported to prove that America’s schools are
inefficient or run by lazy incompetents. Paper-and-pencil tests
seemingly show that kids in private schools – funded by parents – are
smarter than kids in public schools. We’ll get to the top, so the story
goes, if we test a teacher’s students in September and June and fire
that teacher if the gains aren’t great enough.
There has been resistance, of course. Teachers and many parents
understand that children’s development is far too complex to capture
with an hour or two taking a standardized test. So resistance has been
met with legislated mandates. The test company lobbyists convince
politicians that grading teachers and schools is as easy as grading cuts
of meat. A huge publishing company from the UK has spent $8 million in
the past decade lobbying Congress. Politicians believe that testing must
be the cornerstone of any education policy.
The results of this cronyism between corporations and politicians have
been chaotic. Parents see the stress placed on their children and report
them sick on test day. Educators, under pressure they see as
illegitimate, break the rules imposed on them by governments. Many
teachers put their best judgment and best lessons aside and drill
children on how to score high on multiple-choice tests. And too many of
the best teachers exit the profession.
When measurement became the instrument of accountability, testing
companies prospered and schools suffered. I have watched this happen for
several years now. I have slowly withdrawn my intellectual commitment
to the field of measurement. Recently I asked my dean to switch my
affiliation from the measurement program to the policy program. I am no
longer comfortable being associated with the discipline of educational
measurement.

Gene V Glass
Arizona State University
National Education Policy Center
University of Colorado Boulder

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not
represent the official position of the National Education Policy Center,
Arizona State University, nor the University of Colorado Boulder.